THIS OLD TOWN:The Dark Day of 1780

Saturday

May 17, 2014 at 1:33 PM

By Harry Chasemansfield@wickedlocal.com

No one in the five-year-old town of Mansfield left a written record of the Dark Day of Friday, May 19, 1780, when by afternoon an appalling blackness blotted out the sun.Maybe Mansfield folks were too paralyzed with terror to dip a goose-quill pen into a bottle of home-made ink. I’m sure they breathed a prayer of thanks when the sun returned next day.An educated Norton man did leave an account of the Dark Day, and as only a decade had passed since Mansfield was part of Norton, his record can serve for us as well.Apollos Leonard was the observer with the rare presence of mind that day to write down what he witnessed.For several days before May 19 the sun had looked reddish in a brass-colored sky. But farmers remained unfazed and went ahead with their plowing and planting.At dusk on Thursday they listened to the soothing tinkle of cowbells as cattle filed toward the barns and heard whippoorwills calling from the woods. In short, all seemed well. But let Apollos Leonard take over the tale."Friday, Thunder in the morning," he wrote, "after break of the day the forenoon very dark and some rain, the appearance of the clouds very yellow. About 12 o’clock, at noon, lighted a candle to get dinner and dined by about one."The darkness increased greatly, continued to grow darker until half past one o’clock. In the greatest darkness could scarcely see R. Leonard’s house or barn."The shadows of persons in the room were as perceptible on the wall, by reason of the light of the candle or fireplace, as at any time in the night, and ten minutes after two o’clock there was a sprinkle of rain."Half after three o’clock from various observations made of several objects at a distance, and near by, the darkness was as great, when at the height, as it was the evening of the same day at 40 minutes after 7 o’clock, if not exceeding it."About eleven o’clock the same night, darkness was exceeding that of any ever known in this generation, and continued three hours, although at the same time there was a full moon!"You’ll notice that Leonard’s factual account lacks religious overtones or alarm. But that gentleman had earned a master’s degree from Harvard. Elsewhere, among less well schooled folks, sheer panic reigned.Many thought the last day had arrived, the Second Coming was at hand or the sun had died. Men prayed and women swooned, as women were fond of doing in those days.They leafed through their bibles to Revelation and read that on the Day of Judgement the sun would become "black as sackcloth" and the moon "like blood.." And indeed, some were horrified when the moon, where it appeared that night, did look "red as blood."In Norton, the Dark Day didn’t last as long or turn as dark as in other places. But even there, at 2 p.m. roosters crowed, hens went to roost and frogs peeped. Whippoorwills called from the woods. Farmers came in from their fields and cows returned to the barns.At Ipswich the air had a sooty smell and the little rain that fell contained bits of ash and burnt leaves.That should’ve provided a clue to the Dark Day’s origin, but it didn’t, at least not then. Now we know the cause was smoke from huge forest fires along the shores of Lake Champlain or in eastern Ontario, set by settlers burning the woods to clear them for farmland.Some time around 1940 we in Mansfield saw another copper-colored sun when forest fires in Canada spread a veil of smoke over this old town. But nobody prayed or swooned, and it didn’t compare with the frightening Dark Day of 1780.Lifelong Mansfield resident Harry B. Chase Jr. served on the town’s first conservation commission and is a founding and charter member of the Natural Resources Trust of Mansfield. He can be reached at mansfield@wickedlocal.com or at 508 967-3510.